It wasn’t exactly a stellar end to the week; the S&P 500 lost 0.65% of its value on Friday after bumping into an unsurprising ceiling. But, in light of the big advance dished out over the course of the prior three trading days, investors were forgiving. The S&P 500 was up 2.4% last week, after falling nearly 13% from high to low… a low hit on Monday.
Was the setback and subsequent bounce a marker of a bigger pivot back into an uptrend? Probably. There are certainly a couple of key pieces of evidence that point in that direction. But, there’s one last hurdle that needs to be cleared before the “all clear” is fully given.
We’ll look at the key details below, but first, let’s run down last week’s economic news and preview this week’s reports. There’s a lot to think about.
Economic Data
What a big end to the trading week! Though the market rally finally faded on Friday, investors were still able to cheer the bigger-picture bullishness suggested by a strong jobs market. For the month of October, the country added 250,000 net new payrolls, keeping the unemployment rate at a multi-decade low of 3.7%. Wage growth of 3.1% was the best year-over-year wage growth in nine years.
Job Growth and Unemployment Rate Charts
Source: Thomson Reuters
In fact, the basic, headline numbers may understate just how firm the employment portion of the economic engine is right now. We explored the whole picture in detail at the website.
Jobs weren’t the only topic to come up last week, however. Well before that we heard the Case-Shiller Index, giving us a glimpse of how real estate prices are trending.
We already knew for a week ago that home values, though still on the rise, were picking up value at a much slower pace… as evidenced by the FHFA Home Price Index. The Case-Shiller 20-City Index confirmed this slowdown. The pros were calling for a 5.9% year-over-year improvement, but the actual pace of 5.5% was one of the weakest advances we’ve seen in a long, long while.
